


Love Hate Relationship

by GrumpyJenn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Explicit Language, Introspection, Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 12:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4877224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyJenn/pseuds/GrumpyJenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course Mels Zucker remembers the Year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Hate Relationship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandbar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandbar/gifts).



It was him.

Had to be, didn’t it?

“Think of the Doctor,” the girl said, like he was so great.

Mels sighed to herself. Of course, he _was_ great. And awful. And everything in between. He was Amy’s Raggedy Doctor, silly and sweet but powerful. But he was also The Doctor, the one her… her _keepers_ said was evil, wrong.

And she had believed them.

But that was nearly a year ago, and in the meantime everything had seemed upside down and topsy-turvy and _wrong_.

Because over the past year, all she’d seen, been told about, all of it – everything she’d heard about the Doctor was as a force for good, something that could finally pull them out of the shithole the world had become. 

From all reports, Saxon was far, far worse than the Doctor had ever been.

And now here was this pretty girl, clean and kind and passionate and for God’s sake even had every hair in place after the year they’d all had, and she was telling them that the Doctor was about the only thing that could save them all.

They’d just have to all think of him at the same time.

Thinking about him wasn’t the hard part. Mels thought about him all the time.

But thinking about him as a saviour, that might take some doing. Mels’d never been good at going along with the crowd.

Now she’d have to though, wouldn’t she, unless she wanted Saxon to keep the world the way it was.

So she did. When the whole world thought of the Doctor, spoke his name, so did she.

\----------

It wasn’t until later that she realised the world had reset, without her with it. The first time she saw the date in the paper she’d though it was a typo, or maybe a practical joke. But the world was... it was _clean_ , as clean as it ever was, with only the usual rubbish of traffic and murders and normal human sorts of crap. No little aliens in metal balls floating about killing people. No hiding (except from the Leadworth police, such as they were).

Nothing weirdly alien.

“I’ve got to go,” she had told Amy, because if even her best friend didn’t remember the last year, then something was very very wrong. The ginger girl had protested, had even brought Rory in to try to get Mels to stay, but Mels wasn’t having any.

She needed to know what was going on, because what if it was _him_ , what if he was behind this... this awful memory of the past year?

What if it hadn’t even been real?

It was possible; Mels was well aware that sometimes she forgot things, more than the usual run, and also aware that she was apparently the only person in Leadworth who had experienced the past year as she had.

So maybe it had all been an illusion, one created by him, the Doctor, to... to break her, kill her before she became a threat.

She had to _know_.

\-----------

Mels looked around carefully once she got to London. She wasn’t stupid, and she was observant, and she noticed that there were a few people here and there who seemed... jumpy, wary. More so than the usual.

She thought she was observant, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was completely thick, because when she caught a glimpse of a woman who looked like that Martha Jones, the kind and clean and passionate woman who had spoken so eloquently of the Doctor just before the rest of the world forgot, she let herself be distracted, and stepped right out onto the street in front of a speeding lorry.

It didn’t do her much damage, and certainly not for long; these things never did. But she was dizzy and disoriented long enough for the Jones woman to come to see what had happened. Mels let the pretty woman help her into a sitting position, and then she proved she was thick again, as she actually mentioned the woman’s speech.

Blurted it out, really, all _...what you said about the Doctor at the end of that awful year, Miss Jones_ , and the smaller woman hauled her to her feet, took her hand, and dragged her to a cafe. _For someone a few inches shorter than me,_ Mels thought, _she sure is a tough little thing_.

“How do you know about the Year? And for God’s sake, call me Martha; this Miss Jones thing is getting ancient. Were you on the _Valiant_?”

“The _Val_ —?”

“Never mind, you must have been, but I thought we’d rounded everyone up to get some help. The Doctor said... what is it?” Now Martha was looking more concerned than before, less professionally compassionate and more personally worried. Mels wondered vaguely what the expression on her face must be like to make Martha look so at her.

But she’d mentioned the Doctor, and Mels had gone cold all over. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d hoped that it _wasn’t_ him, that it had been some other, unrelated bad guy alien. And now Martha had put that hope down.

It made Mels want to cry. And Mels never cried.

But Martha was still talking, telling her the most horrible things. Awful, terrible things about a Time Lord like the Doctor called the Master, who was Saxon, and what he’d done to Martha’s family, to one Jack Harkness, to Saxon’s human wife Lucy, and to the Doctor himself. Not to mention the steaming pile of shit he’d put the entire human race through, but the timeline had been reset for most of them, everyone except those on the airship called the _Valiant_.

 _And me_ , Mels thought, but it was clear that Martha needed to talk it out with someone she thought had been there, so she just let the smaller woman’s words wash over her, only half listening to them. It sounded as though the Doctor and this Harkness fellow had gotten the worst of it, and Mels wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sad about the former and she didn’t know the latter.

“Lucy, though, she was the worst, the most awful thing,” Martha was saying. “Saxon, he... he’d corrupted her, pushed her so far she was no longer sane, not by our standards. And she killed him, shot him where he stood.”

Mels felt cold wash over her again as Martha continued. She understood this Lucy on some level, how you could love someone so completely that you hated them. And Martha’s account of the Doctor weeping over the Master’s body just solidified that feeling.

She loved the Doctor. Always had.

And she hated the Doctor.

Always had.

She knew exactly how Lucy Saxon had felt. Comprehended why she had loved the Master and yet would kill him.

And someday, someday Mels would do the same to the Doctor.


End file.
